Holding that "because extrinsic evidence can help educate the court regarding the field of the invention and can help the court determine what a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand claim terms to mean, it is permissible for the district court in its sound discretion to admit and use such evidence"
Holding that our written description requirement requires that a specification “reasonably convey to those skilled in the art” that the inventor “actually invented” and “had possession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date [of the invention]”
Holding that "[e]ach application in the chain must describe the claimed features" and that if "one of the intervening applications does not describe" the subject matter, the later application cannot claim the benefit of the earlier application
In GPAC, for example, we found that a reference disclosing an equilibrium air door was reasonably pertinent to a patent directed to asbestos removal because they both addressed the same problem of "maintaining a pressurized environment while allowing for human ingress and egress."
Holding that where “accessible literature sources clearly provided” a description of the teachings at issue, the written description requirement does not require their incorporation by reference
Holding it was error for the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences to require "recitation in the specification of the nucleotide sequence of claimed DNA, when that sequence is already known in the field"
In Reiffin v. Microsoft Corp., 214 F.3d 1342, 1345-46 (Fed. Cir. 2000), the court explained the need "to ensure that the scope of the right to exclude, as set forth in the claims, does not overreach the scope of the inventor's contribution to the field of art as described in the patent specification."
35 U.S.C. § 112 Cited 7,350 times 1045 Legal Analyses
Requiring patent applications to include a "specification" that provides, among other information, a written description of the invention and of the manner and process of making and using it
35 U.S.C. § 103 Cited 6,124 times 478 Legal Analyses
Holding the party seeking invalidity must prove "the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains."